Pelosi's $2 million commuting costs

Since 2007, we U.S. taxpayers have paid $2,100,745 for now-outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make 85 flights aboard a 42-seat Air Force C-32 – which is the size of a Boeing 757.

These Pelosi flights took her back and forth from Washington to her home district in San Francisco in one of the most infuriating of Democratic financial abuses.

Now this financial abuser, Pelosi, has been re-elected House minority leader – another outrage, which was publicly opposed by a number of identified House Democrats.

House Democrats, unless they are unconcerned about further annihilation in 2012, should have removed Pelosi from all committees – in hopes that she would retire.

By marvelous contrast to “Big Plane” Pelosi, the following welcome announcement came from her successor as speaker of the House:

“I have talked to our security folks about the security that’s involved in my new role. But over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on commercial aircraft, and I am going to continue to do that,” said newly elected House Speaker John A. Boehner on his decision to continue flying commercially when he assumes his new duties in January.

Wouldn’t it be fun if the new House, as one of its first orders of business, asked for legislation to compel the enormously wealthy Pelosi to pay for the cost differential between those Air Force C-32 flights of hers and former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s use of a 12-seat Gulfstream III passenger jet?

Newly elected House Minority Leader Pelosi was introduced by Connecticut Democrat John Larson as:

“Our great leader! … They knew her will! Most important, they knew her heart! And that was what was felt today: the heartfelt feeling of this caucus behind this great leader!”

But the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank quoted a number of Democrat dissents:

“The truth is that Nancy Pelosi’s season has passed,” said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., one of more than 60 Democrats who lost their seats on Election Day. “And she is the face of defeat. … It might be unprecedented that a speaker who presided over that large of a loss … would then continue to stay on as the leader of the party,” he said.

So did Pelosi deserve some blame for his own loss?

“Absolutely,” Boyd said, adding that “at some point in time, you have to put your personal agenda and ambitions aside for the good of the country.”

“When you have taken the largest losses of any majority in my lifetime,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who led an effort to postpone a vote on Pelosi’s leadership bid, it’s “time for reflection to better understand the reason for those losses. … The greatest failing in this Congress was that the House was basically acting as a – it enabled the White House.”

Dissidents forced a secret ballot on whether to postpone a vote on Pelosi – and then won a larger-than-expected 68 votes. That essentially meant a vote of no confidence in Pelosi by 35 percent of the incoming Democratic Caucus.